


sweet child

by essektheylyss (midnightindigo)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (diverges post episode 87), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Empire Kids, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, it focuses heavily on the scourgers so child abuse/ptsd are canon-typical, so many empire kids feels in this one yall, this is pretty much just caleb and beau platonically adopt a teen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:28:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21684526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightindigo/pseuds/essektheylyss
Summary: Of course there's a student at Trent Ikithon's home when they raid it, brainwashed and groomed into exactly what Caleb should've become. Of course they take her with them, smuggling her away.For information, they reason, to justify the risk they're taking—but she's still a teenager, young and scared, and she doesn't know anything, and they see far too much of a warped mirror image of Caleb to let her go.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 42
Kudos: 290





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all know I love the Empire Kids dynamic and what could be better than them taking another terrified, brainwashed child of the empire under their wing? Nothing. Imagine Caleb and Beau trying to parent a very difficult teen that they both kinda see themselves mirrored in. You don't have to, because I'm gonna write it for you.
> 
> There will be plenty of angst here, get ready. I'll be updating tags as it goes on.

Once the silent spell had taken effect, the girl had gone along, sullen, dejected, but had gone along, her hair pulled economically away from her face and her bare arms, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, riddled with scars and stars of dazzling crystal, and Caleb looks at her and wants to vomit.

Nott holds his hand tightly and Beau rests one fist on his shoulder, the firm pressure of his friends’ support the only thing that keeps him moving in the old, musty basement of Trent Ikithon’s personal home, tunnel vision keeping his eyes from sweeping to the walls and the chairs and the practice areas, and he shudders as they exit the house into the spring sunshine, too weak to push through all of his fears and the fire that consumes him. 

She is the same age that he’d been, the last time he’d been in this basement, and by the time they reach the tree line, he’s doubled over, shoulder heavy against a mottled pine trunk, and retches. There is nothing in his stomach to expunge, but he dry-heaves, horrible, shuddering gasps, and Beau’s hand tight on his shoulder and the rough pattern of the bark and the soft moss that had crept up on it are the only things he can feel right now; it seems that even his vision has gone dark.

When his stomach has finished its traitorous pains, he sinks down against the trunk, the forest floor in this area that he’d known so well cradling him, and he wonders if Caduceus might cast that odd decomposition spell on his body here, let the worms and the moss eat him alive, where he could be a permanent, eternal haunting to Trent Ikithon’s private grounds. 

Arms restrained, the girl they’d rescued—against her will, but she doesn’t know that it was truly a rescue—is restrained in Jester and Yasha’s strong grips, hands tight behind her back and fingers bound with ribbon to keep her from casting. She watches Caleb with tight, calculating eyes, her hair an auburn several shades darker than his, her face freckled, and he wonders, sickeningly, if Trent Ikithon has a type in more than one way. 

He breaks her eye contact and retches again into the dirt.

Caduceus circles her, his gaze as compassionate as it is prying, and she follows his movements with her eyes, this strange firbolg whose bright pink tone is only now beginning to soak back into his features, the winter having sapped him of his hue. “If I release the silence, will you tell us your name?”

She doesn’t move, only stares, and as dazzling as her arms were, Caleb knows that she’s already learned counter-interrogation tactics well enough not to respond. 

“She will not… we cannot force her to talk,” Caleb rasps, pressing his dry mouth to the back of his hand. “She is too well-trained.”

Nott takes a seat at his side, but he can’t bear to look at her. Instead, he glances up at Beau, towering menacingly above him, the pout of her lips a dare to the girl to try him—any of them, really, but Caleb is the most fragile here, the most at risk, and there is always a chance that this girl could be his undoing. Beau has always known his past the best, even when Nott has failed to understand, and as much as the goblin believes in him, Beau knows far better what it’s like to learn that you’ve been lied to by the people who were meant to protect you.

“Trent will have had alarms,” Caleb continues, pressing onto his hands and knees and scraping the detritus away from the ground. The feeling of it, damp and cold and still crisp from winter, scratches against his palms, alleviating some of the itch in his soul, and he flounders for his component pouch to find his chalks. “We need to leave, immediately.”

“Where are we gonna go?” Beau asks, voice low, but it’s too quiet here for the girl not to hear them speaking. “We can’t bring her to the Archive. The Cobalt Soul is cooler than the Assembly, but not cool enough that they won’t have questions if we show up with Trent Ikithon’s brainwashed protege. And I don’t think Essek is gonna be thrilled if we bring him a Scourger-in-training and don’t let him execute her.”

Caleb watches the girl’s face intently, flanked by the other two women, Fjord just now bounding behind them all through the trees after covering their tracks into the forest. Between the Xhorhasian name and the mention of her impending title and the idea of execution, he sees just a single flicker of fear, and both of them know that bringing someone like them to the Dynasty is a death sentence—it’s a wonder that he himself has spent so much time in the capital without bringing himself to ruin. A testament to his friends’ protection, perhaps, or his own motivations to keep himself safe when they are around. 

That’s a new feeling, he thinks, that he has protected himself because he knows what it feels like to lose another member of this group. They all do, but only a few of them watched the fall. 

But this girl likely has not figured out who he is, though he can only assume, after the woman in Xhorhas knew his name, that he is considered a traitor worthy of the highest disgust to the Vollstreckers, the type of person who would be brought before this girl for torture and execution. Only the worst of those imprisoned by the Empire were dragged to this house, summarily offered up as target practice—and worst—from the fledgling assassins. She would know his name, he knew, Ikithon would make sure of it.

Fortunately, that is not a name he claims any longer. It is a name that has done unspeakable things, things that he sees behind his eyes every time he closes them, but it is not the name that he has chosen for himself and it is not the name that has helped save several towns of the Empire, has forged rights in an attempt to make up for everything the name she would know has destroyed, and become a hero of the Kryn Dynasty.

Of course, Caleb Widogast is unlikely to be considered anything besides a traitor to the Assembly either, even if they knew only what the deeds of this name, but it’s not a name he thinks she knows.

“Caleb,” Nott says softly, as he scrounges in the dirt for enough space to draw out the teleportation circle, though clearing the clutter is only an excuse to stall for more time, before he has to answer their question.

Where can they run now, with this girl as their prisoner, that ghosts of the Empire will not follow them? And they will certainly be looking—even if they cannot find Caleb, don’t know who else might’ve broken into the house and stolen away a valuable asset, they know who she is, and they will find her.

“Yussa,” he barks finally, and begins the process of drawing out the sigil he knows will take them to Nicodranas. “We need to go to Yussa.”

“The Zolezzo work with the Crownsguard though,” Jester reminds him, as though perhaps he’s forgotten. She is subdued now, focused on the task at hand, but he hasn’t missed her prying glances even as she cannot be there to offer the same physical support as Beau and Nott have.

“We need a mage,” he growls, continuing his work and ignoring her eyes—her, and Caduceus’s, and Fjord’s, and Nott’s. All of them have been watching him with pity since they entered the house, navigating the series of traps set and subduing the young wizard, and he can’t bear to keep looking at them. “We need one of these,” he snarls, and rips the pendant from beneath his shirt with his free hand, holding it out to them while still keeping his head low, his occupied hand on autopilot as he works. “Otherwise they will always be able to find us.”

Fjord and Caduceus exchange a glance and nod as though their shared deity grants them telepathic speech, but Caleb knows that they are both merely the group’s joint moral compass, levelheaded and, well, mostly impartial, considering they spent their lives the least touched by the Empire or Xhorhas’s presence. Even Jester, for all intents and purposes a princess in a tower, grew up close enough to the border and under the combined watch of the Zolezzo and the Crownsguard, that this conflict is not as distant as she perhaps would like. 

He is nearly finished with his circle as he catches Fjord and Caduceus watching him, and sits back on his heels. The damp earth soaks into the knees of his trousers, but he ignores the feeling and lets the dirt seep into him, as much a shield as it always is. “Are we in agreement? There is no one else I trust to get us an amulet like this. And if both myself and this girl—” he meets her eyes, and he thinks she’s starting to understand— “do not have one, then we might as well all slit our own throats right now.”

He holds the last of the chalk so tightly in his fingers that for a moment he thinks he might crush it, but Caduceus nods and looks around at the group. 

“Yes, yes, I think that’s the best option. I don’t think anyone of that kind of access to magical items is friendly enough to us in other places outside the Empire.”

“Can I complete this, then?” he asks, and holds up the chalk once more. Once he has gotten a majority of silent nods, he hunches over again and begins the last lines of the circle. Jester and Yasha push the girl forward as the sigil lights up from beneath his feet, and quickly, silently, they pass, for now, beyond the reach of the Empire.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any semblance of canon compliance that there was in this fic is now gone. Vive le AU!
> 
> Thank you to everyone who sent kudos and commented; it makes me giddy to get emails that let me know people enjoyed a thing I wrote. I hope you continue to enjoy it!

The tower is quiet when they arrive, and the moment her feet hit the floor of the chamber, Beau realizes once again that they should’ve called ahead.

It’s all fine and dandy to show up just passing through, but they’re arriving with, essentially, stolen Empire property. She’s participated in enough criminal exploits to know that the people you’re bringing the stolen goods to generally prefer a heads up before they become an accomplice.

And safe passage through his home and a very valuable pendant to get away with the criminal exploit in question is a lot to ask of a mage who’s lived long enough to know that the key to staying alive is keeping one’s nose down. 

The little goblin assistant comes running the moment their feet hit the ground, and in front of Beau, the girl looks around with mild interest. They’ve already confirmed that they won’t be lining her up for execution, but she’s gotta be freaking out, even under her measured facade.

Then Beau glances at Caleb, still clammy and a little green-tinged, and catches his bandaged arm deftly in her hand and squeezes. His fingers fumble for hers for a moment before holding their hands together, and she lets him absorb the warmth of having a friend beside him who sees all of his flaws and fears and helping him shoulder the burden regardless.

Was this what he was like, as a teenager? Before he—before what he was forced to do? Cold and analytical and utterly put together, so different from the half-faded visage beside her. She can’t picture him like this, blindingly loyal to an Empire that had only begun to show him its teeth. 

The door swings open soundlessly, probably well-oiled, whether physically or magically. The goblin stares up at them, past the long point of his nose, and she can’t remember his little butler-y name. All butlers and assistants have similar-sounding names. 

She’s met enough of them to know that.

“Hey,” she says with a nod that earns her a jab of Fjord’s elbow. She smiles, feeling like she probably looks constipated, and gives a poor salute. “Take us to your leader.”

The goblin doesn’t so much as glare back at her; in fact, he looks a little bored. “I’ll see if he can see you.”

His gaze hovers briefly over the girl, whose name none of them yet know, and moves to close the door. As he goes, Caleb calls after him, in the faint voice that means he’s only half-present on this plane, “Thank you, Wensforth.”

As the door closes, Beau grimaces and snaps her fingers, disappointed. “I knew he had a butler-y name!”

“Perhaps now is not the time,” Caduceus says, and turns to the girl to evaluate her while they await their host. He has to lean slightly to meet her blue eyes, clear as the sky over Nicodranas, and she looks a little uncomfortable beneath his gaze, compassionate and clinical simultaneously. 

Beau finds Caleb’s own gaze, unfocused and darting around the room, and she squeezes his hand again, still clasped in hers. Compassion was not something he’d been used to, when they’d met, and she has a feeling that started long before he’d left the asylum. He’d been trained to show no mercy, if the Scourgers they’ve met are any indication, and that kind of training generally involves learning from experience to expect no mercy in return. 

If they weren’t in front of this girl, whom she assumes they’re trying to break for information, and if they weren’t on the doorstep and at the mercy of a very powerful mage, of whom they are going to ask for help, she would wrap her arms around his shoulders and let him break down right here and now; any of them gladly would’ve offered a shoulder to cry on, something that, from the looks she’d exchanged with her friends before entering Ikithon’s house, they’d all been prepared to need. 

Caleb has always been the closest of any of them to a ledge that no one else can see, one that he’d tottered nearer toward in Rexxentrum and one that he is likely balancing on now, and from experience, he’d feel a lot better if he just let it out, but this isn’t a place that would allow for that. 

Maybe if they get what they need and leave, find their way to the Lavish Chateau; maybe that would be private and safe enough for him to melt. But for now, icy composure is the only thing between them and getting all of them out of here alive. 

“We are here,” Caduceus says gently, and the girl doesn’t look away, “to find out what we know to end the war. You were being trained to protect the Empire, right?”

After a moment, slowly, oh so slowly, she nods. Her voice is still gone and her hands are still bound, but for the first time she looks like there’s a chance she won’t try to curse them all the moment Caduceus ends the spell. 

“We are here,” he repeats, “to do everything in our power to end the war, and to save the lives of the people fighting and the people who are caught in the crossfire. That is our mission. And I think you fall into both of those categories.”

Now she looks almost scared, and her eyes flit to Caleb, still dazed. Her eyes pass over the bandages visible on his arms, then glances down to find her own, dazzling in their array of crystals, as though momentarily forgetting that her arms are bound behind her back. 

The door opens again, and Wensforth stands back to gesture them through. “The master will see you now.”

The sitting room is configured to accomodate them all, a long couch situated across from one large armchair that envelops Yussa like a throne. He’s clearly expecting trouble, based on the frown on his lips and the sharp arch of his back, slim shoulders closer to his pointed ears than normal, and the moment Yasha and Jester march the girl in, his eyes fall on her scarred arms.

“Oh, gods help us all,” he sneers, before sighing and sitting back. “I suppose there’s nothing for me to say that will convince you lot to return this girl to whatever disgusting hellhole you pulled her from.”

“Technically the hellhole we pulled her from is quite clean,” Jester corrects him, and shoves the girl into the exact certain cushion of the couch. It is not an unkind push, but it has enough force to send her sprawling without much resistance.

Not that she’s particularly strong; she’s slender and probably pretty breakable, and Beau wishes her face wasn’t so punchable-looking. It’s like Caleb’s—and Yussa’s to an extent. Arcanists—they’re always so punchable. Even when they’re drowning in self-loathing, they look like they know that they’re smarter than you.

“You know what she is, then?” Caleb asks, leaning forward where he sits, his palms pressed together. He’s barely on the edge of the couch, and Beau pulls him backward by the collar before he can fall off the edge and look like a goddamned idiot in front of the mage currently being forcibly dragged into their schemes just by them occupying his sitting room.

Yussa eyes Caleb’s own bandages and raises one eyebrow. “Yes, I know what she is. I know what you were, once. I’m well aware of how the Vollstreckers operate.”

“They’re ghost stories in the Empire,” Beau points out, wondering, as she often does, how this elf knows so much. Even the Expositors only spoke of them as legend. “What do you know about ‘em?”

He watches her carefully. She wonders what he thinks of her, not for the first time, the only fully human, fully mundane member of the group. Most mages of his ilk would scoff at her, express disdain that she even looked in his direction, let alone addressed him in such an informal tone. 

Punchable faces, mages.

But Yussa evaluates her question and taps a long finger on his chin, crossing one leg over the other. “I have lived long enough to know that no ghost story is without its origin, and no legends began as such. Plus, I have enough ties to the Cerberus Assembly to know what they have created. It would be foolish of me not to keep tabs on such things.”

His ventures into the happy fun ball notwithstanding, Yussa has never struck her as a foolish man, and he cements that analysis almost every time she’s heard him speak. “Alright.”

“She’s, ahem, very important to a task that we’ve been given,” Fjord says, putting on all the charm he knows how to and still managing to stumble over his words a bit as he obfuscates. This isn’t his quest, and he knows it, but he’s still the one who tends to take the lead with the talking. In this situation, unfortunately, its hard to know what cards to play.

“She may know where an artifact of great importance to the Kryn Dynasty may be,” Caleb says, and Beau holds her breath as he adds, “One the Empire has likely stolen for their own gain.”

“And what might that be?” Yussa asks casually, though based on his darkening eyes, his attention is piqued.

“Do you remember that… that strange dodecahedron we showed you once?” Nott asks, sitting beside Caleb, their hands now clasped together. 

“Yes.”

“It is another one like that,” Caleb says wearily. He looks like a strong wind might blow him over, but his voice continues, unwavering, even as faint as it is. “Xhorhas would like to see it returned, and only then would the end of this war be considered.”

“And you think this Scourger in training knows where it is?” Yussa barks a laugh. “She’s a child. I doubt anyone with that kind of information would have given it to her.”

There’s always a possibility that interrogation could offer clues as to where they might find the beacon, but Beau’s pretty sure that Caleb’s insistence that they bring her with them was more because he was seeing himself standing in her shoes than for any information she might be able to provide.

“We can leave as soon as you’d like us to,” Caleb says, teeth gritted, and he means it; he clenches his fists against his thighs and tenses to stand. “We know we are putting you at great risk. But we need one of these first, and I don’t know where else to ask for one.”

Unclenching one hand, he shows Yussa his amulet, normally tucked beneath his scarf. Yussa regards him, his inability to meet the old mage’s eyes, and his tense limbs, and stands. “You were smart to come here.” He opens the door into the hallway and calls to Wensforth. “Fetch one of the amulets from my study. One of the plain ones.”

After a long moment of silence among them, Wensforth returns with the amulet, a plain metal pendant on a silver chain, and fastens it around the girl’s neck. She glances down to look at it, curious, but doesn’t put up a fight. 

“If you were smarter still, you would put a blade through her throat and interrogate her from beyond the grave,” Yussa adds, eyeing Caduceus, who meets his eye far easier than Caleb can right now. “But it is, as you humans say, your funeral. Now please leave, before you get us all into trouble.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I am just here to repeatedly break my own heart, in case that wasn't abundantly clear.
> 
> Chapter-specific warning for mention of the residuum scars.

The city bustles when they leave, mid-afternoon in the Open Quay; the ocean breeze hits their faces and fills their noses with brine and fish and Fjord’s shoulders soften first, as attached as he is to the sea, and his eyes find the Wildmother’s lighthouse on the coast. Caleb follows the movement, envies him for his divine guidance, wishes there were such beacons for mages such as himself. Even the Kryn have the Luxon, and all he has are his own broken promises and questionable morals. 

It is hard to know what the good thing is, when you are so focused first and foremost on doing the correct thing. The thing that will keep you alive for another day. 

“I don’t think we should go to the Lavish Chateau,” Nott says first, as they stand among the crowds, tight-pressed around the girl to hide her bonds. “Even if they can’t scry on her—”

Nott is right; they would be putting Marion and Yeza and Luc in danger that way. This is already risky enough as it is, for all of them, and bringing in more—well, he doesn’t blame Yussa for giving them the least amount of help he can afford and throwing them to the wind. 

Everything about this is dangerous. 

But he couldn’t have left her behind if he’d been dragged kicking and screaming from the house; he could see all of the tension in her arms, tendons against the scars and the crystals, in all of the places he used to hold his fears. She is not to be trusted, he knows; though they’ve relieved her of her spell components, there are plenty of ways to hide that kind of thing on a person, he knows. She certainly doesn’t have the ability to hurt them too badly here in the shadow of Tidepeak, and he’s pretty certain that she’d rather die before making a scene here, where there are other people watching, but he doesn’t want to give her the chance to try.

“Caduceus,” he says softly, and the firbolg, waiting so pleasantly at the front of the group that Caleb thinks an ignorant passerby would’ve assumed him dumb, turns to look at him with kind eyes. “Can you please lift the spell from her now?”

Caduceus waves one hand, relinquishing her voice. True to expectation, she doesn’t scream for help, or create a ruckus in an attempt to escape. Of all of the tactics they were taught to use, relying on others was not among them. 

“Can you tell me your name, please?” he asks, and she upturns her nose at him. His breath leaves him in a shuddering exhale, and he scrapes one hand across his face. “Very well, ja. Okay.” 

It’s the last thing he wants to do here, so exposed in the middle of the thoroughfare here, but, encircled by his friends and caught in their warm support, he pushes up the sleeves of his coat and begins to slowly unwind the bandages there. She watches them with disinterest, already knowing what she’ll find, but she cannot tear her eyes from them, where the crystals embedded within them have been removed and torn away. It is a graveyard, a staunch reminder that this is all that awaits her. 

“My name,” he says softly, and even above the bustle she doesn’t strain to hear him, “was Bren. Do you know who I am now?”

She nods, and he begins to methodically hide all of the scars again, not letting her eyes linger too long. 

“Can you please tell me your name? Just your first name. You now know far more about me than I will know about you.”

She seems to be pondering this for a time. It’s true, he thinks, but maybe not; he knows that she is likely a clever, small town girl, small enough that no one will miss her, an only child, a voracious reader with great ambitions, and a blinding loyalty to king and country ingrained by years of miseducation. She is likely already a murderer, as he was already a murderer at her age. She is likely to be difficult to sway, but not impossible, as was he.

All it takes, he knows, is one spark, and suddenly her world can go up in smoke. Just as his did. 

“Margit,” she says finally, and the word doesn’t sound like a name on her tongue. It sounds like any other word, one with little significance aside from linguistic classification. Something to be discarded in favor of any other word. And then she adds, “I’m supposed to kill you on sight.”

He hears Jester’s sharp intake of breath, sees Beau’s shoulders tense, feels Nott cling to his elbow tighter now. But Margit doesn’t move, makes no attempt to do as she’s been ordered, and he thinks that bringing her outside of the Empire was the first step toward her noncompliance.

And the fact that that is what she knows of him doesn’t surprise him or even affect him like it does the others; he’s been running for a reason, and if his compatriots hadn’t accepted that yet, then they are far more foolish than he thought.

“Let’s see if the ship is docked,” he says, finishing tucking the wraps into each other, tight enough that his hands tingle, blood straining to reach the tips of his fingers, where fire has all but burned the prints off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is much longer because what are consistent chapter lengths lol


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We got some good Empire kids content last night, boys!
> 
> So of course I'm here to ruin everything with angst.

Beau can only guess that this Margit girl, from the way her eyes widen to take in the breadth of the horizon, has never seen the sea before today.

She stiffens a little, grinding their amoebious little group—huddled together to conceal Margit’s bindings and hopefully obscure from the Zolezzo and occasional Crownsguard the fact that they’ve essentially kidnapped a teenager—to an awkward pause, before Yasha pokes her in the side, getting them moving again. “Hey,” she says softly, in that voice she has that is gentle and menacing all at the same time, and Margit does in fact look a little afraid of her—but it’s Yasha. Of course she does. Arcane smarts are only so effective on your own against a mountain of a woman. “None of that.”

“I didn’t know it was that big,” Margit breathes, and it’s the first time they’ve truly heard her voice, the youthful wonderment that hides behind her trained exterior, her accent a lilted approximation of Caleb’s, all light vowels in contrast to his sharp consonants. “It’s so much bluer than any lake in the north.”

“There is plenty of beauty to be found outside of the Empire,” Caleb says from behind them, trailing back with Nott, and Jester smiles fondly at him. 

“Better pastries, too!” she announces, and, arm still linked with Margit’s, as inconspicuous as she is capable of being, she tosses a gold piece to Nott. “Go pick up some pastries to bring to the crew!” She nods over her shoulder, at a booth whose sweet, cinnamon smell they only now begin to pick up over the sharp salt of the air. 

Nott squints at the gold piece, then back at Jester, with faux suspicion. “Alright.” Then a smile takes over her green face, and she scuttles off into the crowd at waist height. There’s no way she isn’t relieving other passersby of their coin as well, out of the watchful eye of the Nein, and Beau snorts loudly. 

They follow a discordant echo of bagpipes to its source. The Ball-Eater happens to be docking when they arrive, the crew unloading today’s shipments, and Beau peers over the boxes as Fjord flags Orly down and waves him to the dock as they board. The moment they make it above deck, they fan out from around their prisoner, out from the prying eyes of the guards monitoring the dock at sea level. She takes up post at the starboard railing, watching for anyone watching them. Their crew are too used to the Mighty Nein to question it, and the Ball-Eater is a perfectly reputable ship by now, thanks to Orly’s excellent captaining, so Beau can’t imagine they’ll meet any resistance here. 

And if necessary, they’ll sail away and out of the guards’ grasp. They’ve done it once before with some amount of success, and she’s always been an expert at running away from her problems. Where her feet couldn’t carry her, she’s always found other methods of transportation.

That isn’t how the Scourgers are raised though, no—from observing them, they always seem to want to return to the Empire, whether in life or death. Caleb is an exception, a runner like her, willing to travel as far as he needs to for security and atonement.

She thinks they’re all on fool’s errands, but that seems to be the Empire way, after all. Look at this war—all over a stolen artifact, one that they could offer in exchange for talks of peace, and yet how many people have already been wounded and killed to maintain that thread of imperialism? Of course it’s not quite that easy, she knows, it’s never been that easy, but it is a symptom of the poison that plagues this continent. 

Beau would love to know how many times she’ll rehash this argument in her head—whether the Dwendalian Empire is worth saving or not. Some days she thinks that cutting out the cancer in the Cerberus Assembly will be enough; other days, when she sees the scars on her friend’s arms and the fog that covers his eyes, she thinks she should burn Rexxentrum to the ground.

Fjord and Orly find her, and Orly tips an imaginary hat to her slowly. “Why, hello, Miss Beauregard. I’m glad to hear that you’ll be staying with us for a time.” He gestures with his claws to her shoulders, where the jade green shines on her skin. “How’s that tattoo working out for you?”

She nods with a smirk that holds more bravado than she had expected she’d be able to muster, but the tortle’s joyous energy is contagious, and she gives him a quick hug. “It’s dope,” she says with a grin, though her eyes dim a little when she glances toward the stern, where Caleb trails Yasha and Jester as they push this young Scourger into the shadows over the door to the captain’s quarters. “Is it alright if they go in there?”

Orly nods, and Fjord interjects to speed up the conversation. Normally he loves chatting with the old tortle, but the girl’s presence is making them all jumpy, and Beau’s sure they’ll be happier once they’re all below deck and out of sight of the docks of the Restless Wharf. “Orly said we could lock her up there.”

“Just mend up whatever you break,” Orly adds with a sly smile, and Beau can’t help but smile back. She pats him on the shoulder before following them into the dim stillness of the captain’s quarters.

By the time she gets inside, they’ve already bound Margit to a wooden chair, her arms tight behind her back. The longer she spends alone with them, the more she looks like a deer caught in a hunter’s sight, realizing that the recompense that she is waiting on has not yet arrived. 

Caleb takes a chair and sits down across from her, tossing his coat heavily onto the bed that takes up most of the port side. He runs his hands over his face, the scruff of his chin starting to overtake his face. “When was the last time you had a shave?” Beau asks, mocking enough in tone, but they both know it’s a serious question. “You want Yasha to get rid of that shit on your face?”

Yasha offers her sword as she passes toward the door, and he shakes his head. “Perhaps later,” he says, and cups his chin in his bandaged hands. 

Nott’s voice echoes over the deck, screeching for Jester about baked goods, and Jester skips away from where she’s fiddling with the ropes and checking the knots. On the way out, she pats Caleb on the shoulder. “Just a little blessing from the Traveler for both of you,” she sings cheerfully, though her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Just in case you need it,” she whispers, and they’re suddenly alone in the captain’s quarters, Beau’s hand heavy on Caleb’s shoulder, staring at a young, terrified blue-eyed girl.

She’s so young. Beau is young, younger than Caleb, at least, and maybe it’s how sheltered, how isolated Margit has been, but she’s a lot younger than Beau was at seventeen, now that her confident facade has started to splinter.

Beau can’t help but marvel at how small she seems, tied up in the dark here. She can just make out a tremble in Margit’s shoulders, the way her pupils widen, though it’s not totally clear whether it’s from fear or trying to see. Either way, this girl is scared, probably as scared as they are just looking at her, and Beau wants to crouch down in front of her and tell her everything’s going to be okay, that nothing will happen to her now.

But that isn’t something she can promise, not with Trent Ikithon’s attack dogs likely on their trail, not with a war raging further across the continent. And it’s certainly not something Margit will believe, even if it was a promise she could keep.

“I don’t know what to fucking say,” she mutters, after the silence stretches onward, Margit waiting for backlash and neither Beau nor Caleb willing to deliver it. “What got you out of this bullshit?”

Caleb blanches at her tactless question; they both know what got him out of this ‘nonsense,’ and it was the death of his only family and a decade in a mental asylum. But they don’t have that kind of time to waste here, waiting for this teenager to come to her senses all on her own. It’s hard enough for Beau to think of something meaningful to say in the face of Caleb’s hopelessness on a day-to-day basis; Margit has only ever known what representatives of the Empire have told her, and that is all she’s ever learned to believe. 

“I was… I was like you, once,” Caleb says softly, finally speaking up. He can’t meet her eye, but he’s talking, and that’s something. Beau wishes they hadn’t jumped into this so immediately, but between the war and the gods, there isn’t time for him to lick his wounds. “You know this already, though. Has your tutor told you why…”

“Why you went crazy?” Margit asks, and there’s a sharp edge to her voice in the face of Caleb’s vulnerability. Beau has to resist the urge to slap her; treating this more like an interrogation than they already are will just make her clam up.

But Caleb just smiles, that sad smile that he always wears when he’s just clinging to his own composure, and she squeezes his shoulder again, letting the warmth of her hand sink into his skin. He looks vulnerable, smaller, with his coat shed on the other side of the room, and she does the same with her expositor mantle, leaving them raw and exposed and hopefully more human.

“Yes,” he sighs, and she shakes her head. “Do you have any brothers or sisters, Margit? Any family members, besides your parents?”

She shakes her head again, a wrinkle furrowing between her brows, and this mention of her family is already causing the wheels to turn. “No, no, it’s just me and my father.”

Beau’s next inhale is sharper than she’d like it to be, betraying a little discomfort at this conversation that she’d rather have concealed. But Margit is staring at Caleb, and she’s smart, and if Ikithon has already started to modify her memory, there won’t be too much trouble putting together what he’s leading toward.

“And is he loyal, your father?” Caleb asks, and his voice is so soft it nearly gets lost among the sound of the waves lapping against the wood outside. “To the empire?”

Margit’s eyes are wide, and she looks even younger than she already had now. “I don’t know.”

“No, I didn’t know either,” Caleb says, and leans forward over the edge of the chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal the bandages and his elbows resting on his knees. He certainly looks like a madman, his hair unkempt, holstered books attached to the suspenders over his shoulders, like an eccentric professor with third degree burns. He presses his fingers together. “I didn’t know either. When I was home, they were talking about… they were speaking of treason, and we both know what becomes of _traitors_ , don’t we Margit?”

“Don’t talk about my father like that,” she snarls, voice like a whip, and Beau takes a step back in surprise. Even in spite of the youthful appearance, she’d still expected something more like the scourger they’d encountered in the Xhorhasian prison, unyielding and blank, but though she has been trained well, Margit is only a child, and all of her energy and emotions are still enough to come spilling over the edges. 

“I spoke nothing of your father, only mine,” Caleb says; through the outburst, he hasn’t flinched. This is a rage that is intimately familiar to him, and as such he knows that it’s coming.

“And what have you done to your father?” Margit asks, guttural, and Beau has to remind herself that the girl hasn’t broken yet; she’s certainly on the edge of something, like Caleb is always dancing on a cliff, but the ground has not dropped out from beneath her feet.

“I killed him,” Caleb says, as blank as the scourger; his training, in that regard, has settled in quite well, but Beau knows it is only a carefully cultivated exterior, a shield as much as his spells. “I burned my parents alive, because Master Trent Ikithon ordered me to.” Beau studies her face, smooth and apathetic, just that tiny wrinkle in her forehead. Margit watches Caleb, just uncertain enough whether to believe him—she’s been told he’s a criminal, and a traitor too, after all. 

But Beau can see the hint of truth settling in her eyes like a spark. She is a monk of Ioun, after all; she can recognize a revelation on anyone’s face. 

Whether it is enough to sway the girl still remains to be seen. 

“Do you believe him above such things?” Caleb asks, standing, brushing nonexistent dirt from the legs of his pant and the front of his shirt. He’s been cleaner recently, and she wonders whether he’ll regress back to the dirty, scruffy man she met months ago now that they’ve exposed themselves this badly to the man he’s been hiding from for years. “Because if not… then you have not been paying attention to your studies.”

As he turns, his shoulders shake, and Beau waits until they’ve closed and locked the door, stepping into the sun of the Menagerie Coast, to wrap her arms around him and, for the first time today, let him break.


	5. Chapter 5

The shattered mirror that he’s staring into feels like an elaborate prank, a trap left for him in Trent Ikithon’s residence, though Caleb knows that the man doesn’t care enough about him to go to those lengths. 

_Kill on sight._ He’s surprised, actually, now that thoughts begin to settle again over his consciousness, now that he can breathe for a moment and let the emotions flood him. He’s surprised that she knew his name, that she had been given such explicit—and dangerous—instructions.

But maybe Trent Ikithon believes that any interaction between him and a Vollstrecker will end in murder, one way or another. A girl like that doesn’t have a chance against him, and he and Ikithon both know that, but at least she would die fighting, if it came to it. Better to be killed than taken alive, perhaps.

One failure on her part, then. 

He may even believe Caleb more deranged than he is, used to the feebleminded lunatic that he was carved into in the sanatorium, his last knowledge of his former pupil only that of a coldblooded murderer—but if it was murder, it was only that of survival. Perhaps not pure self defense, but the desperate attack of a wild creature who knows if the hunter is left to his devices, it may soon find itself in his sights.

Scourgers only know kill or be killed after all. Living as hunter and prey takes its toll, after awhile.

It is only things like Beau’s arms around his shoulders now, her leaning into his collapsed spine as he struggles to force his lungs to expand and contract, that have reminded him how to be human again, rather than a wild animal. 

It is only his friends by his side that have taught him again how to breathe.

He’s only half aware of her shuffle as she pulls them toward a bench near the boat’s edge, and her voice reaches his head slowly, as soft as the sea breeze, even with the hard edge she can never quite shed. 

“You’re safe here, alright? You’re safe here. It’s okay.”

It’s not a demand for him to snap out of it, or buck up, or control what he desperately wish he could control, he knows. His friends are far too used to each other’s idiosyncrasies, their insistence on all being the strong ones and the eventual breakdown that will come with that, to try and prolong that.

No, it’s a reminder that this is a place where he can collapse. This is a place where no one will judge him for it, or think worse of him. It is not something that can be said about most places, but the Mighty Nein are too used to being judged constantly by the rest of the world to not make their own circle as safe for each other as possible, even when they don’t extend the same leniency to themselves.

And still, still he hides his face in his bandaged hands, the shallow breaths barely fending off the waves of emotion that cause his eyes to sting with unshed tears that simply won’t come, even when the sadness and the horror and the memories threaten to crush him into dust. He doesn’t know how to stop it, only to contain it. Still, some of it leaks out of his edges, the holes in his composure he hasn’t figured out how to plug. 

“You don’t have to hold it together here, Caleb,” Beau snaps, in that harsh way that means she’s deadly serious. “You’re allowed to fucking cry, or something. Or, or, yell, or scream—you’re allowed to do that here.”

“I think if I were to scream from the boat the Zolezzo would quickly come to see what the commotion was and then we’d have far worse problems,” he stammers out, and she pulls back a little at his flippancy, throwing her hands up enough to show that she’s sick of his composure, holes or not. 

“Listen, if you don’t wanna have a meltdown, that’s fine. But that meltdown’s gonna have you eventually.” He stares at her, the wording just strange enough to question—if Jester was privy to this conversation, she’d certainly have made a dirty joke—and Beau’s glare hardens on him. “Fine. Whatever. You can stay the strong, silent one.”

“You are the strong one, Beauregard.” His retorts are almost second nature now, his brain functioning on autopilot to keep him alive, even now that his survival isn’t quite in question. Maybe he hasn’t fully unlearned predator and prey, hunter and hunted, after all. 

He’s still the wild animal, escaped from its cage.

Jester sidesteps over to them, but there’s a hesitancy in her movements, the usual skip absent, and she leans into their conversation with far more respect than he’s accustomed to. He finds he hates this version of her, dancing around him and treating him like broken glass, but he can’t bring himself to express that out loud. It’s not her fault that he’s fragile—it’s not her fault that she’s right to tread as though he might cut any one of them open.

“Fjord wants to have a team meeting,” she whispers conspiratorially.

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea right now, Jes,” Beau whispers back, and she does seem to make an effort to hide the words from Caleb, along with a not entirely inconspicuous sidelong glance toward him. 

But Fjord is right; Jester is right. They have a kidnapped child of the Empire on board, one with very powerful allies, one who has not yet been convinced to join their cause or renounce her own, and they are sitting in a port not only friendly to the Empire, but also crawling with Crownsguard who will not hesitate to cause a scene, unlike Margit’s Scourger friends. 

Of course, the Crownsguard are not what Caleb is worried about—though the Mighty Nein have not gone out of their way to antagonize them, they have also never hesitated to take them on when necessary. The Assembly, and whatever number of far more subtle tools Trent Ikithon has at his disposal, will not be obvious in their attacks and they will not leave any of them alive.

Caleb’s mind flashes to the Scourger in the Kryn prison, the way Essek had crushed her body into nothing with one swift close of his fist. It would be so useful to have Essek and his more powerful dunamancy at their disposal, but that was not on the table, just like taking refuge within the Empire was an awful idea. 

“Ja,” he says, and stands, Beau’s arm falling away from where it rested on his shoulder, and she looks almost hurt. “Ja, we should talk.”

“Caleb, maybe you should get some sleep, and we can talk about it in the morning,” Beau starts, but he waves off the suggestion even as he rubs the exhaustion from his eyes.

“This cannot wait until morning,” he insists, and he can tell from the way she follows toward the upper deck that she knows it’s true. They both do—this is not something that they can walk away from, a dream they can wake up from in the morning. This is a decision that has been made, that they now have to handle—even if it was a decision they’d make again. They both know that.

That doesn’t mean either of them have to like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only know how to write slow burn friendships, sorry, kids—it's gonna be a long ride over here.
> 
> Also, like consecuted M9 and Shadowgast? I am posting the beginning of a fic with both later today! And it's gonna be way too much writing! I am hyped! It'll be called Sacris.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Circle time!

It’s not an unusual little circle of theirs, propped up on barrels and benches and, in Caduceus’ case, sitting cross-legged on the deck. 

But there is a tension that has not been felt among them until recently—the tension of not knowing how one of them is going to take this, of the past being bigger than the strides they’ve taken to outrun it.

The longer she spends away from the sharp eyes of the teenager locked in the captain’s quarters, the more Beau believes they’ve made their worst mistake to date. 

The sky has not yet fully darkened overhead, the hint of pink still present in its hue, and Caleb sits in shadow beneath it, no stars and no moons yet visible to illuminate the crevices between the barrels and crates they’ve adopted as their meeting place. The crew is ashore, drinking and resupplying and enjoying their evening in port, but the Mighty Nein can’t join the revelries. They’re playing with fire here, and it is clear in everyone’s eyes that they’re waiting for it to burn.

Beau remembers the fight they had on this deck, so long ago, some of the scorch marks still visible in the warped wood that was not damaged enough to warrant replacing. It feels still like there is a barrier between Caleb and the rest of them, as distant as he is right now, and she worries how far they’ll have to travel from this point to bring him back from the brink.

Caduceus passes around a plate full of fruits and baked goods that smell fresh from an oven, though Beau hadn’t realized enough time had passed for him to cook. Still, the bread she picks up is warm and soft beneath her fingers, and she lets it settle into her stomach, its honeyed flavor thick on her tongue. 

Across from her, Caleb doesn’t eat.

“Are we getting out of here?” Fjord asks finally, once almost all of them have collected something to eat. Caduceus watches Caleb as well, tucked away as he is, but hasn’t yet tried to force feed him. “Should we… should we leave port in the morning, find somewhere more private to deal with this?”

“Where is more private?” Yasha asks, her voice low, her arm propped against a barrel. “I don’t know the sea as well as you but… aren’t there, you know, lots of ships?”

“We can get off of the trade routes, go back to one of the smaller islands we’ve visited, coves in areas that are uninhabited,” Fjord suggests. He too is watching Caleb, though with a much more apprehensive eye, and Beau would elbow him if she didn’t think it’d be too obvious. 

Caleb isn’t paying attention anyway though, so she sits with her knees drawn to her chest and lets them continue on wherever this train of thought is taking them. 

“We could go back to Darktow!” Jester suggests with a brandish of the lollipop she’s pulled from nowhere—possibly among the treats Nott had returned with, but Beau can’t be sure it hasn’t been in the deep recesses of the haversack for the last few months. 

“We’re _banned_ from Darktow,” Nott points out, and then adds, “but that doesn’t mean we _couldn’t_ go there, I suppose—“

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Beau finally speaks up, sitting up straighter and pulling her cheek from where it rests on her knee. The darkness is settling in, and she’s squinting to see them now, even with the light from Nicodranas filtering softly onto the deck of the ship. 

Caleb isn’t even looking at her, but he waves his hand, and four lights appear out of nowhere, hovering inside the circle, slowly orbiting the space between them. It feels like they are all galaxies apart. 

“Thanks,” she offers, a little gruff, but he nods, and she knows he understands. It can be a hard being the humans among a host of people who all have such strange latent abilities and magic, the ones who are unable even to see in the dark without the use of magical means. “I don’t think we should sail into a pirate island of people who would be more than willing to turn us over to the highest bidder with a very dangerous, very valuable fugitive on board.”

“She is not a fugitive.” Caleb’s voice is flat. “She is our prisoner.”

He’s facing away from them, face turned into darkness, and the others share a glance that passes around the circle, like a game of telephone that skipped him altogether. This isn’t an intervention, but it could get there, if Caleb keeps talking like he’s been brainwashed, like someone else has control of his faculties. If he keeps saying things to distance himself from this girl they’ve stolen. 

The more Beau thinks about it, the more Margit feels like Caleb’s long-lost sibling, as twisted and warped as he is by their shared circumstances, and she doesn’t like where the little Scourger girl might drag him back to. 

Then again, if they can pull her closer to them, then maybe they’ll have an upper hand against the Assembly for the first time in, well, ever.

Sure, Margit is just a child, and she’s just one child at that, but teenage girls are far more powerful than they’re ever given credit for. If Beau had been given the benefit of the doubt as a teenager, she’d probably have been in much better shape. 

That’s something she can give Margit. The benefit of the doubt.

“All of the islands within reach are still under the jurisdiction of the Clovis Concord,” Beau points out, running one hand through her hair. It’s falling out of its tie by now, flyaways tickling across her hairline, and she hasn’t bothered to fix it yet. The discomfort is a reminder. She can’t get complacent. 

“Yes, but no one really _goes_ to a lot of them,” Fjord says with a shrug. Near his feet, Caduceus has nearly fixated on Caleb now, who tuck his arms behind his knees, rubbing and scratching intently at the bandages that obscure his scars. 

“We should leave now,” Caleb hisses, and everyone looks at him now. “We should sail away, and keep sailing, because we have targets on our backs, all of us.”

“Well, now, what we did today was foolish, sure,” Caduceus says, and slides the tray of food toward Caleb. He doesn’t move to take it, but his eyes do flicker toward it and then to Cad. “But I think what we did was necessary, and logical, and best for everyone, really. If we’d left her there, someone could’ve scried on the rest of us. And she’s a lot better off here—or she will be, once we get her to trust us.”

“Are we worthy of trust?” Caleb shoves himself to his feet, and Beau can see the bloodshot eyes, his restless fingers, the way he looks like an animal backed into a corner. They should’ve had this conversation in the morning; he’s exhausted, and it’s making his paranoia and his anxiety and his terror worse. She doesn’t blame him for any of those feelings—they’re certainly not unjustified—but the way he’s moving now he’s about to collapse.

She’s on her feet in a moment, bounds across the circle, across the universes between them, and catches him before he falls over himself.

The lights hovering over the deck go out.

His pulse flutters in his chest beneath where her hand steadies him, the other around his shoulder, and she only pulls one hand away to pick up the warm bread that Caduceus passes her. “Eat this, right now,” she snarls under her breath, and he’s too tired and out of it to argue now that he’s worked himself into, well, into some kind of attack. 

“Do you— does he— can I—“ Jester’s halfway to her feet, offering her hands to heal, but Caduceus shakes his head. One of the moons has risen over the eastern horizon, nearly full, stars twinkling into existence, and there’s enough light to see by even though the sky has turned an inky purple. 

“He needs some food and some water and some sleep,” Cad says, smiling up at Beau and Nott, who has appeared silently at their waists, eyes frantic and concerned in her usual angry Mama Bear way. “He’ll be just fine after that.”

“Nott, let’s find him a bed,” Beau says, shooting down Fjord’s open mouth with a glare. “We’ll leave port in the morning, find somewhere a little more hidden. And then we’ll take it from there, one day at a time, alright? The same way we always handle everything.”

Their captain doesn’t protest, only nods, though his broad shoulders are tense and she can see his hands flex like they’re itching for his sword, itching for an enemy to fight. Beau knows the feeling; this isn’t a problem she can solve with her fists, and it’s making her as angry as Nott looks, as scared as Caleb is. 

He eats his bread as they steer him away from the circle, below decks to their quarters, and his muscles soften a bit. It’s helping, at least. But even with that hope, Beau finds herself disagreeing with Caduceus’ wisdom for the first time in a long time. 

Caleb might be better in the morning, certainly more than he is right now, but after today, there’s no way any of them are going to be ‘just fine’ for a while, least of all Caleb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a few chapters until the action speeds up a little, I promise!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, who's been emotional over the last few episodes, because I sure have! I have no excuses for the fact that I forgot to update last week except that I forgot—but in my defense, Laura Bailey. Mindblowing. Come on.

Nothing feels quite solid as they stumble below deck aside from Nott’s hand in his and Beau’s arm around his back.

The slight rocking of the boat certainly isn’t helping, an unusual feeling after being on land for so long. Even in the harbor, the lull is enough to catch him off guard, though that isn’t hard to do at the moment, what with how… difficult, he supposes, today has been. 

The little cabin room he shares with Nott smells like brine when they enter, from how long it has sat closed, and he’s mildly surprised the crew doesn’t use it while they’re gone.

It is little thoughts like this, uncomplicated analysis, that keep him on his feet, from collapsing whole-heartedly into Beau’s shoulder—if he can focus on small things, he can keep moving. His knees won’t buckle, and his vision won’t blur over, and the smell of ash and smoke won’t crowd his nose and his lungs—

He is grateful for the smell of the sea, damp and heady.

Beau’s voice comes to him like it’s traveling down a tunnel as they help him sit down on the cot there. “You got him?” She sounds gruff, rougher than she usually addresses any of the Nein, but he can’t focus on her enough to get a reading of her face. “I’m gonna go check on…” she hesitates for a moment, and then locks eyes with Caleb, though he still isn’t sure that he’s found her eyes, “the prisoner.”

Nott nods. “I’ve got him.” She too seems almost defensive, like Caleb’s breakdown is putting the two of them at odds, and he wants to tell them not to worry about him, but the words stick in his throat and he can’t swallow them down. 

No, they should be worrying about getting out of here as fast as possible. Whether anywhere on this plane is safe is another question. 

Part of him wants to place the girl in the Prison of Soot and throw the Happy Fun Ball into the ocean. A better part of him, the part that is not quite as much of a coward, knows that they’ve just freed her from a prison that she couldn’t even recognize from the inside, and that he cannot trade one for another. The rational part of him knows that, whether or not Margit is on the Material Plane, the rest of them are at risk when Trent Ikithon sends his minions to find them. 

And really, Margit is a bargaining chip, as much as he would like to think he would take that route as a last resort. She may well be useful, even beyond whatever talents she has, beyond what information she might be able to provide. And if it comes to it, he is willing to trade her life for his friends’. He has no doubt that he would make that decision.

He has no illusions that it will not come to that. 

The door closes, louder than he thinks it should’ve, and he jumps out of his reverie to Nott sitting beside him, one hand running soothingly across his shoulder.

“Caleb,” Nott says slowly, as he blinks away the fuzziness. With only the two of them here, it is somehow easier to compose himself. “Are you alright?”

The breath he takes shudders in his lungs, and he exhales before he answers, honestly for once, wondering when he began to even resemble an honest man. “I don’t think I am.”

She wraps her arms around him, and his shoulders heave as his head drops to his chest. “That girl… that was me, fifteen years ago, Nott.” Like looking in a mirror. “Just cold, and blank, and empty. He… you know what he does, Nott, he teaches you all of these wonderful things and then he rips any love you have for them away.”

Nott buries her face in his chest, and he wraps his arms around her, trembling and glad for the warmth of her presence. 

“There is only cold in that life,” he exhales, his voice as brief and light as the wind. “It is only just… numbness, no feeling or passion or… or love,” he says, and he thinks of Astrid sitting across from her parents calmly while they choked on poisoned wine, the question of why in their eyes, while those three cold, unfeeling children waited for them to die. He can still feel the metal of the silverware, the white porcelain plates, beneath his fingers, cold to the touch. And Eodwulf’s dagger, with which he slit the throat of his father and his mother, freezing in the night air. 

Caleb wonders if the tools he had used to kill his family had been cold, rather than the heat of the fire against his face, shockingly warm after so many months of ice, whether he would’ve broken after all. He too sat with Astrid’s parents and watched them collapse in their chairs. He too waited outside the bedroom door and heard the schick of the knife against bare skin, the rasping gurgle of air and blood as it seeped out of warm bodies and into the cold night. Perhaps the screams would not have affected him, without the burn.

It is fire that keeps him awake and alive, he thinks. Warmth. It was only when he met Nott, slept curled beside another warm body, that he started thinking again about the consequences of his actions.

Even the time he spent with Astrid was sterile, like metal, even as much as he loved her then. 

“Nott,” he says, and realizes that she’s been waiting for him to continue as he’s fallen again into his thoughts. Fire may maintain him, but nothing can keep him awake tonight. She peers at him with her wide eyes, and there’s a bit of uncertainty there—they both know that he is not himself tonight, and neither of them quite know what will fix it, if anything. “Will you stay with me?”

It is a plea like a prayer, soft on his lips. 

“Yes, of course,” she responds, and he nods, and presses his forehead to hers, eyes shut tightly as he pulls her into his lap. “That’s what I’m here for. You know that.”

He does know that, but in his darkest moments it can be hard to remember that there are a few people who will be by his side whenever he needs it, whenever he asks, without question. It is not a gift he believes he deserves, but it is one he will accept anyway. He has always been selfish. “Thank you,” he whispers.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, seems I've suddenly got a lot more time to kill, so fic-writing it is! 
> 
> I had to go back and remember where I'd fallen with Beau in this fic because... if you're caught up, it is a pretty different headspace from where she is in canon haha. (If you'd like to come discuss that with me, hit up @essektheylyss on tumblr lol)

The captain’s quarters are dim when she enters, the faintest outline of the girl against the back windows. She looks like she might be asleep, hair dipping into her eyes where her head falls forward, but Beau remembers the Scourger in the prison, how she’d concealed a weapon that had nearly cut Caleb down where he’d stood. 

She dons her goggles even if it might make her look ridiculous. She doesn’t have a healer so readily on hand, and she doesn’t have a handy drow elf who will crush the life from someone who threatens her. 

No, she’s on her own, and she might be the lion in this den, but she also knows that the lions don’t always win. 

“Margit,” she hisses, and, without any arcane means to create light in the room, and having left her pack on deck, she bangs her fists together, electricity sparking between them, and lightning hums over the outside of her gloves.

The girl’s head tilts upward with… something like exasperation, Beau recognizes. It’s an expression she’s worn quite often over her lifetime. “Oh, did you all decide you’ll be resorting to torture? Finally, something I am familiar with.”

Her bored drawl has fallen back into place like a mask, and Beau holds her fists aloft, enough light for the girl to see by but not enough to blind Beau herself with her goggles. 

“No, no. If I wanted to give you a little pop-pop for information, I wouldn’t use this on you. The punches hurt longer when they don’t immediately cauterize.” She clears her throat. “I just.. just forgot a fuckin’ lantern.”

She holds her hands together as though they’re the wrists bound in this room, and kicks a chair into place to straddle, forearms resting delicately on its back. Margit watches her with enough uncertainty to perhaps qualify as apprehension, and Beau’s glad she has that much of her attention. “So what are you doing here again? You already tried me today.”

“Caleb tried. I supervised. But it’s my turn now.” She rests forward, and finds that Margit matches her gaze, as intense as Caleb’s can be sometimes, the blue electric as it reflects the energy in her fists. The eyes of a predator who has been backed into a corner. 

This girl is seventeen, she reminds herself. She’s no more a predator than Kiri is, with her dagger back in Hupperdook. Older, sure, more trained, but a child nonetheless. 

“So, what,” she begins, and mirrors the boredom that Margit is trying and failing to exude. “They told you you were special. Some kind of prodigy. And you listened.”

“I always listen,” Margit bites back. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you’re fucking great at following orders,” Beau continues, and doesn’t let her harsh mask break at all, even though internally she wonders what she’s doing in here. Margit is too scared and too brainwashed to listen to _her_ , of all people. She’s sure the Cobalt Soul get-up isn’t helping; as much as they cooperate, the two organizations have never seen eye to eye, and she can’t imagine Trent Ikithon instills any respect for people of her ilk in his students. He doesn’t seem like the type for accountability. “You ever thought for yourself? Ever once in your life done something because you wanted to? Or was it always just what you were told was good for you?”

Margit doesn’t answer. Now she looks away, her hair hanging in front of her face, and Beau resists the urge to force her to meet her eyes. 

“Do you believe my friend?” she asks, her voice so gentle that it surprises even her, and now Margit glances back, eyebrows raised at the softness she wasn’t expected to be offered. “Do you believe him that Trent Ikithon would’ve led you to murder your father in cold blood?”

Her face is smooth as stone, but Beau can almost see the words formulating behind the mask. The carefully chosen response is even more succinct than she’d anticipated. “I don’t think it is beyond him, no. But then I don’t know your friend, aside from tails of bogeymen and traitors.”

“Well he’s been nothing but kind to you, even though we basically kidnapped you,” Beau retorts. “I can’t imagine you can say the same thing about your teacher.”

With that, Margit smiles, an eerie, haunted smile that stirs a rage within her. It’s the smile of a hurt child, the one they practice in the mirror. The one she’s practiced in the mirror in the past, before she stopped believing a smile might save her.

“Kindness has never been married to truth,” she answers. “In fact, it is often divorced from it. It is a tool to be wielded when appropriate, nothing more.”

Beau’s skin prickles, as though the electricity is arcing into it, but that isn’t what sends the shiver up her spine. 

“Look, kid,” she says. “I wanna fucking help you, but I can’t if you don’t wanna be helped. I don’t think you want your dad dead, right?”

Margit stares back at her for a long moment, the smile falling off of her face as quickly as it came—a practiced facade. Finally, almost imperceptibly, she shakes her head. 

“Okay, I didn’t think so,” she continues. That’s a start, at least. Something she wants that is her own. In fact, something she wants that is directly antithetical to what her teachers would demand of her. 

“But if he’s a traitor—“

“No, no, no, no,” Beau hisses, cutting her off before she can finish her thought, and Margit actually looks taken aback for a moment before the cool mask slides back into place. “Whatever your teachers have told you, it’s… it’s fucking wrong,” she says, and the electricity crackles in her hands. “I don’t even know if the people they made you—“ she shakes her head, uncertain if she can say it out loud, like usual. She finds the words finally, like lead weights on her tongue. “I don’t even know if those ‘traitors’ they made you kill were criminals. Dude, your dad isn’t a traitor. You’re being tested, in a real shitty way. Do you want to see your entire life go up in flames?”

She cringes as she thinks back to the lectures she used to get from the Cobalt Soul monks, before Dairon had taken an interest in her. It feels like a betrayal of how much she hated that, hated being spoken to like that, even though looking back, maybe they meant well. She had been a teenage criminal though, jailed for… well, a lot of shit. She had long before learned not to believe a word that came out of her dad’s mouth, and as such tended to look on the people he’d hired to make her disappear with equal disdain. 

Margit was a loyal student, on the ‘right’ path, whatever the fuck that meant, and she was right—she was a good listener. Her gaze narrowed in on Beau when she spoke, like every word might be a lifeline that she couldn’t be sure wasn’t a trap. 

Or maybe, Beau thought, as she narrowed in on the light in Margit’s eyes, it wasn’t a lifeline she felt she deserved.

“Take it,” she growled through gritted teeth. “Take whatever chance you have not to throw the rest of your life away. Because if you go back to fucking Trent Ikithon, you’re either going to learn to live with the monster they’re making of you or you’re going to break apart.”

“Do you think me so weak that it would come to that?” Margit asked, a false lightness to the question that felt to Beau like a stab in the heart.

“I think you’re strong enough that it might come to that,” Beau sighed, and finally, she realized what the difference between this and their earlier interrogation was. 

Margit had treated Caleb with fear, since he’d shown her the scars on his skin. She’d shirked from him and his harsh words and biting accent. But Beau… she didn’t think to fear her. 

That had been her mistake, then. Because after Beau had said that, a look of horror had overcome her.

“Do you love your dad?” Beau asked, reverting back to the softness that had seemed so surprising. “You love him, right?”

Margit nodded. “He’s the only person I have. I love him more than anything.”

“More than your country? More than, I don’t know, whatever glorious future of assassinations and espionage you’ve been promised?” Beau can feel the heaviness in her chest. Trent is going to come for them. And if he can’t find them, then he’ll find Margit’s father. 

The moment Margit nods, Beau knows she’s right with a certainty she can’t explain.

“Because that is the choice they’re offering. They’re offering you everything left of your family, and your home, or this future they’ve built you. And you can’t have both, and at this point…” she shakes her head. “It’s not even really a choice that they’re still offering.”

Margit is smart, and she can understand the look on Beau’s face as well as Beau can analyze hers. “My father is in danger.”

“Yes,” Beau agrees.

“ _You’re putting my father in danger!_ ” Margit howls, with a rage that so completely suffocates the room that Beau finds it difficult to breathe for a moment under it. When she looks up again, tears are streaming down her face with the sudden realization of what is going to happen. “ _You need to let me go back!_ ”

Letting go of the electricity in her hands, Beau swings her legs over the chair and stands, squatting in front of her. The darkness in the room doesn’t phase her behind her goggles, even as the lights of Nicodranas outside the windows begin to wink out with the late hour. “Listen to me. Listen. If you go back, the situation’s the same, and your dad still fucking dies. Do you understand? The only scenario where he makes it out alive is the one where you cooperate with us, and you let us _help you_.”

Margit whimpers now as she pulls against the ropes, shoulders shaking as she sobs, and Beau leans forward and very, very tentatively wraps her arms around the girl’s shoulders. She flinches back at the first contact, but once Beau has completed the gentle embrace, Margit lets her face fall into Beau’s shoulder, tears wetting the fabric of her shirt. She trembles as she lets them fall.

“There,” Beau says, self-conscious suddenly, and it doesn’t come out as gentle as she’d like, but one hand rubs the girl’s back. “It’s alright. We’re going to help you, but you need to let us do it. You need to trust us.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Margit says, and she looks like a child when she pulls back, her face red and splotchy and streaked with tears, and Beau looks her in the face, hands resting on the seat of the chair on either side of her knees. 

“You have to try,” Beau insists, pushing just hard enough for Margit to learn how to bend. The way the Scourgers have been trained to think will only poison them all, sinking this ship as slowly and steadily as a vial of acid eating away at the hull. One hole, and they all go down.

It’s never been so clear how fine a line they’re walking here, but she thinks they might’ve been dancing on it in a fog without realizing for a lot longer than this.

“We’ve saved Nott’s husband from the Kryn,” she offers, because she knows it’ll impress Margit, for whom the Dynasty has been propped up as an ancient dragon—nearly impossible to kill, but a creature to be slain and slain again. And Margit’s eyes do widen a bit in surprise. “We’ve saved a lot of people. And we’ve killed plenty of them too. So let us save you. Okay?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy oh boy quarantine's hitting us all hard, huh?
> 
> I finally sat down and outlined this fic, so... I am updating the rating to Mature, fyi. Warnings have been updated as well. It likely won't warrant the warnings for sometime (though... this chapter is fairly violent) but I wanted everyone to be advised as early as possible! This is also why I need to outline things before I start to post them, so lesson learned.

Ah, it burns.

It always does. This time is no different.

What is different is that his parents stand in front of him now, their eyes wide, their mouths parted in silent screams that do not reflect the night they really died. What is different is that the fire does not come from his own hands, that they are not burning by his own design. No, he is burning as well, his skin tickling and then screaming with the flames, and he thinks he screams before they do, this time, but he cannot tell.

The screams are so alike, his own and his mother’s, and he wishes he could distinguish so perhaps he could hear her voice once more, but that is not what his mind allows. There is no resolution here, only penance, and the wailing echo of indiscriminate pain is all that he is allowed.

It is all that he deserves, really, and even in dream he knows that though his hands do not cast the spell, he is to blame all the same.

No, it is the young scourger, Margit, who casts the spell, her eyes as bright as his in the light, freckles starkly contrasted against her skin in the dark, beyond the searing flame. He can see the scars on her arms as clear as day, glistening with crystal that he knows too well, fingers dancing with air-written runes that he recognizes from rote memory, and the muscles of his hands mirror the movement even as she casts, the fire leaping from her to the man and woman in front of him, their faces obscured again by the flame. 

And behind them all in the light of the fire consuming the wooden building where he was raised, its frame illuminated in the red flicker, he can see the yellow face of his master, her master, both of them still marionettes on the end of strings, and he sees the hard lines of her face where the remorse has been drawn out of her like strings of muscle, just as it had been pulled from him, before eleven years in an asylum made him forget what it meant to be numb. 

Perhaps that is why he cannot staunch the flames that lick at the scars of his arms, that scream at his ears, that fill his nose with ash. Numbness only got him here, and he cannot follow that path again. So he screams as his master laughs, and Margit’s harsh face does not soften, and he reaches out to her with charred fingers, blackened from years spent in the fire and the dirt, dirtied with the blood of his parents and his friends.

She cannot save him, not now, but perhaps he can save her, reach her before the fire does. The pyre is welcoming, warm even as it burns them both, but his fingers scrabble along the soft flesh of her cheeks, and every touch is another inch closer to salvation for them both.

“Screw the Empire,” he snarls, his voice a growl in his throat as it claws its way out of his mouth, leaving scars on his lips and tongue, and their master laughs again. Through it all Margit does not move, her blue eyes glassy, like the life has been wrenched from them and held alight in stasis where it cannot be freed.

He shakes her shoulders, but she screams silently now too, and the cold laughter of their master nearly extinguishes the fire.

She grips his arms in her hands, stronger than he’d have expected for such slender fingers, and he thinks that his friends once clung to him with such tight grips as they wrestled him into submission. He cannot remember the moment, but remember the tightness of their hands on his shoulders as they shoved him into the ground and bound his fingers with ribbon to stop him from casting any spells to save himself from the good of the Empire. 

And there they are, suddenly, his friends who dragged him to that asylum under his master’s careful watch, and they hold him to the ground by his shoulders as he screams, and Margit weaves the ribbon between his fingers, burns spreading up her arms and beneath the inflammable cloth of her uniform, and her expression never changes even as screams echo in his mind and he isn’t sure whether they are his, or his parents’, or hers, or the collective scream of every Empire citizen that Trent Ikithon has sacrificed for their own good—

He wakes up in a cold sweat as Nott presses a waterskin to his trembling lips.

She doesn’t leap back when his eyes open, and he’s grateful—he thinks his hands might’ve been moving to reach for her throat in his sleep, but perhaps she has not noticed. He wrenches them back now, and her eyes flash with something he cannot name. She noticed, but she is still here.

His eyes sting with tears for her loyalty to him, that she would care for him beyond whatever dreaming assault he may belay upon her, and he wonders if it has happened before without him knowing, how many bruises she has sustained at his unconscious hands that she has hidden from him, the way she does not flinch from his violence.

He tucks his hands beneath his arms as he sits up, and thinks that he will sleep alone from now on. Whatever benefit he gains from having her here cannot stand in the face of whatever he has done to her in his nightmares, what kind of flames he might set alight in his sleep.

For now, though, he takes the waterskin from her hands and overturns it upon his head, breathing heavily for the damp air of the sea. 

“Caleb, you’re here, you’re alright,” she says softly, and wraps her thin arms around his shoulders. “You’re with us. You’re alright. You’re safe.”

“I am not safe, as long as we have her,” he snarls, the venom in his voice intended for Trent Ikithon, but he fears it has poisoned his friend as well when she flinches at it. “None of us are safe, Nott.”

“We’re safe for now,” she says, slowly, measured, like every word is carefully chosen for him, and the hesitancy hurts him more than the dream could. But then, he could’ve cut her far deeper than words can, and he hadn’t even needed to be conscious for that. “We’re among friends.”

“She’s not a friend, Nott,” he says. “She’s a liability.” 

It’s silent aside from the rushing waves of the bay beyond the hull, and he wishes they were out to see. Perhaps then he could bring himself to drown Margit in the waves where they can be anonymous, but here they are under surveillance and caught in the web of Nicodranas at all times. “She’s just a child,” Nott says finally, and brushes his hair back from his forehead. “Just like you were.”

“We both knew what we were doing,” he growls, and turns over in the cot to feign sleep, waiting for her to speak. When she doesn’t, barely breathes in the quiet, he wishes he were better at lying to her, at offending her, because she sighs and turns over as well, her back pressed to his, and they both drift off to sleep again with the exhaustion of the day before and the lull of the ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always for reading, and I hope you are well! Let me know what you think!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone's doing okay—it's been a weird month, month and a half. It's always missing Critical Role hours, but if you haven't watched Narrative Telephone and you're feeling the same, definitely watch it. It sparks joy.

The ocean sparkles beyond the railing of the deck as they move out to sea, the glittering crystal of the coast falling off to a mirage as the ship hurries further and further away, Beau leaning heavily on the railing all the while. She’s the first mate, she should be helping—but she can’t bring herself to move as the horizon calls them closer, and Jester sidles up next to her, nudging Beau’s hip with her own. 

“Whatcha thinking?” the tiefling wonders, a hum in her throat, her tail flicking against the saltine wind, and Beau’s spine sags further.

“I’m thinking that Margit shouldn’t be tied up in the captain’s quarters,” she mutters, resting her chin on the heel of her hand as she turns to Jester, whose eyes sparkle as blue as the sea below them in the sun, and she cannot imagine the blue of Margit’s eyes with this much life. She doesn’t get seasick, not with how easily she holds herself, but she wants to vomit over the side of the boat thinking of how much the empire—the Assembly—siphons away from the people it uses, the children it takes under its wing with empty promises of patriotism and loyalty.

“Well then,” Jester smirks, and shuffles away like a small dance, on her toes, “perhaps we should let her out?”

Beau hasn’t moved in an hour, but the moment Jester dances away, she follows, as though tied to her with a string. “Jes, I dunno if that’s—“

Jester throws open the doors to the captain’s quarters, empty and dim with their prisoner, who blinks against the sharp light that enters from the doors. The shades are pulled against it to the south, where they’re headed, but the sun is harsh enough that it reverberates off the wood of the deck and illuminates the inside with a soft golden glow. 

“Well, well, I did not expect to see anyone today,” Margit says quietly, eyes squeezed shut, and Beau follows Jester inside, unable to resist her pull. She’s right though—Margit is young and scared and keeping her in the dark—literally—will only alienate her further. And Beau thought she’d gotten somewhere last night.

“If you promise,” Jester offers, holding out a hand just out of Margit’s reach, “not to kill anyone on this ship, then we will let you walk around. Cool?”

Beau is still not sure if this is a good idea, but she’ll do a lot at Jester’s behest.

Including babysit a murderous empire teenager, who cocks her head curiously and meets Beau’s gaze.

“Ah, and are you okay with this plan?” Margit asks, and Beau narrows her eyes at her. She didn’t start out promising not to kill any of them, and Beau isn’t sure if that makes it seem like she’s being cautious in checking where she might get in trouble with this offer or if she’s deflecting the question.

Or both, maybe. Beau can certainly multitask her suspicious answers. Surely a kid whose silver tongue has been carefully cultivated by the Cerberus Assembly has learned the same thing well.

Odd how both Margit’s and Caleb’s silver tongues have been pulled out of them in a language not their own, their accents lilting and harsh all at once, a reminder that they are yet another way the Empire leeches from that it shuns, the accent of poverty and old money at the same time. It’s a voice that Beau only knew from the ideals of politicians who frequented the Truscan Vale before she’d met Caleb, that some of them had adopted when they’d left for Rexxentrum to make them seem like they were of the people when they went searching for youths of the Zemni fields to recruit for their bitter wars.

And Caleb and Margit among them, promised glory and honor and national pride. 

Beau would’ve spit at the feet of people offering her the same, but she has always been a rebellious child, privileged enough to know that she has the luxury of rejecting any ideals that someone tries to offer her. She imagines that the clever farmers’ children of the Empire do not have that kind of luxury, nor the experience to know that it is an option.

She can’t blame them for that. 

Margit looks almost taken aback when her fingers tug deftly at the ropes, allowing her to stand. “We’re out of port now,” she shrugs, and her voice nearly sticks in her throat. “No one who’s looking from Nicodranas can see you now. Let me show you around.”

It sounds like Margit’s breath is ripped from her lungs as she gasps upon stepping into the sun, its heavy weight settling on all of their shoulders. Beau is more than used to it, but Margit looks like she’ll turn pink immediately, like her thick uniform, built for the north, might suffocate her in the heat of the ocean even with the salt breeze that sweeps across the deck as the ship picks up speed. 

“There’s nothing,” Margit breathes, and rushes to the back of the ship—Beau momentarily fears she’ll throw herself off of it, but she shades her eyes and peers back toward the coast, where there is only horizon. 

“Yeah, we’re out to sea!” Jester chirps, and hoists her skirts to climb toward the crow’s nest. Margit turns back to watch her, squinting against the sun.

“Here,” Beau says, letting her voice soften. “Do you want—I don’t know if you’ll fit in any of my clothes, but… you look like you’re probably really fucking hot.”

Sweat beads at Margit’s temple, the high neck of her shirt already damp with sweat that darkens the grey material. It’s probably some kind of wool, and she certainly can’t wear it here without looking like she’s gonna collapse. 

Margit takes a long time to answer, looking like she’s wrestling with the idea that she’s still technically being kidnapped and the fact that it is really fucking hot here in the sun. Finally she nods. “Yes, yes please.”

Polite too. Beau doesn’t think she’d be so polite, in Margit’s place, but she’s glad for it, because she wants to take care of this kid, wants to help her, and she can’t if Margit does something that warrants them making her walk the plank. Not that Beau’s even really certain that they have a plank to walk, though now that she comes to think of it, that’s the kind of thing she definitely should know, as the first mate. 

Margit looks almost rueful as Beau leads her below deck, tossing her staff back and forth in her hands, ducking her head in all the right places. It’s instinct, performing the cool kid, and her chin juts out as she turns to walk backward. “Never been on a boat?” she asks coolly, and nearly smacks her head on a low doorway for her troubles. 

Margit reaches out to steady her, and the hand on her arm surprises Beau for a second. “No, no. Never.”

She doesn’t expect this kind of compassion from this girl—not that Margit isn’t capable of it, just that… the concept of being docile here is so foreign to Beau. She’d go down fighting or she’d have to be sedated, she thinks.

The image of Jester’s limp form on the floor of a cage flashes in front of her eyes, and this time she does stumble, slams her arm into a doorframe. 

She catches the wood and turns again, and Margit stops short, taken aback.

“You’re really not gonna try to kill any of us?” she asks, and flashes a tense smile, and Margit’s blue eyes are so widely innocent, and Beau’s good at knowing when people are lying but she just cannot tell whether she’s being fooled here. 

Maybe it’s because she knows that, like Caleb, the Scourgers are used to lying by omission. Caleb is still sleeping beyond the door down the hall, and she wonders if he’d be any help here, but she won’t wake him for her own insecurities. She can handle one kid.

“Nein,” Margit whispers finally, shaking her head, and Beau blinks at their name being spoken on her light voice. It’s not what Margit is referring to—in fact, she can’t even remember if they’ve mentioned their name to her at all since they took her under their wing, but it still confuses her enough that she doesn’t remember to analyze the word itself for hidden meaning. 

“Okay,” Beau says, and nods toward her quarters.

“Are you really not going to try to kill me?” Margit whispers from her back once she’s already turned, and Beau wonders how intimidating the group of them really look to an outsider, even one as well trained as this. They’ve come so far since that group of dirty fuck-ups in Trostenwald, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that. Only when Caleb washes the dust from the road from his face does it really properly hit her.

Margit is too _clean_. That’s the problem, that’s why she can’t help thinking that she’s out of place aboard their ship. Functionally, yeah, of course she is, whether she’s clean or not, but she sticks out like a sore thumb. And Beau knows sore thumbs. She's been that sore thumb, and she's been too clean, and she's dragged herself into the mud to rub all the strappings of her upbringing away.

She shrugs again. “You haven’t given us any reason to yet,” she says, refusing to betray any weakness for Margit to exploit, even if she’d had the inclination to. It’s an easy defense, one that Beau uses almost on instinct. “So, you know, keep that up, and we won’t have to.”

And she notices the oil building in Margit’s hair, the salt already settling on her face as the sweat evaporates in the cool dimness below decks. Maybe she’ll get to their level faster than she thinks. Margit smiles, without really acknowledging Beau’s searching eyes, though she must be aware that she’s looking, investigating all of her intentions with every word.

“I’ll try not to,” Margit says, the melancholy of the night before still there somewhere, but for now it has been squashed deep beneath her exterior.

“Cool,” Beau nods, and shuffles back toward her quarters. “Let’s get you some better clothes, and then I’ll show you around. You afraid of heights? Hope not. Jes will be real bummed if you don’t go check out the crow’s nest.”

She rambles as she pulls her spare set of clothes, the ones she’d discarded in favor of her expositor’s mantle and sash, from the bottom of her rucksack, and pushes it into Margit’s almost incredulous hands. They’re threadbare and worn, have been through some shit, and she almost misses the bittersweet tears in the corner of Margit’s eyes as she stares down at them and turns in the direction that Beau points to change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'm trying to update this every two weeks.


End file.
